Game thinking from Adam Clare

Jim Guthrie has gone from being a Canadian musical indie champion to a video game musical indie champion. He’s the great mind behind the musical score of Sword & Sworcery and not too long ago he sat down to be interviewed by The Verge.

Guthrie provides some keen insights into making music for video games and making games themselves.

What have you learned about adaptive scoring since you began work on Sword & Sworcery? Has it influenced your methods or style?

The biggest thing I learned was if you can think it, you can probably build it and make it work in a game. If your ideas are overly complicated then the code will tell you by crashing the game every time you change or add something. I had no idea how much work went into a game. Also, less is generally more and the simplest way is always the best, but that’s not always apparent especially when it’s your first game. In most cases the music is the last thing on peoples’ list, but if you have the luxury of creating a game around the music and the music around the game then you’ll probably achieve something pretty special in any game genre.

Have you ever thought about making a game yourself?

More recently I’ve thought about making my own game but the biggest obstacle is finding someone to help you code it. Not to mention the 5 million other things you need to do to properly design and market something that isn’t a total piece of crap. I’m too busy to put the time in and pursue someone to help but eventually I’d love to make my own game. Most of my game ideas start with the music so it’d be interesting to see what I come up with!?